Archive for April 2008

Sharks don’t look so good, so it seems like all the sports teams I touch turn in to stone, when I look away, because I was watching the Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons in the NBA playoffs yesterday and at half time, the 6ers are ahead by 10, and then I said “Oh, I’m going to watch the Sharks Game”, so I watch the Sharks Game, and after the second period, the Sharks were ahead 2-1 and I said ” alright, I’m going to watch the Simpson’s now”, turned on the Simpson, and at the commercial, I looked online and the 6ers were outscored by 18 points in the 3rd quarter and lost the game by 9 or so, and the Sharks gave up 4 goals in the 3rd period and lost by 3, so I guess the teams that I care about can not succeed unless I am giving them supervision, and guidance, and management… listen

Even the most modest of people out there, at one time or another, have a desire to be listened to. It goes back to when we were infants, crying for Similac. We weren’t really hungry. Those babies in the diaper ads were rail-thin, and we wanted to be like them.

No, we pretended to be hungry because the result was Mom paid attention to us, even if for a little while. A little while is a big deal when you are a baby. A little while is a much larger portion of an infant’s life than an adults. And besides, if we were really hungry, would we really be spitting up afterward? It’s no different than trying to top off a full gas tank.

As we progressed through childhood, we were taught manners, which, while they may have been a waste of time, taught us the key to letting people be heard: Don’t talk when other people are talking.

Yeah, it’s polite, but so what? That isn’t the point. The point is, because people have been raised to be this way, when you talk, you’re being heard! Hooray for you! You better have something clever to say now that the spotlight is on you.

Well, the truth of the matter is that it doesn’t matter how clever you are. Most people are actually rather nimroddish. And whether it is because they are unaware or are indifferent, they just go right along talking, broadcasting their ignorance to the world. And the rest of us are stuck listening to this fool until someone else comes along and interrupts him.

Perhaps our sample lad here really is that dumb, but he is smart enough to notice that he is being interrupted. And he is smart enough to realize that if he can be in a situation where he cannot be interrupted, then guess what: Everyone will be stuck listening to him once again. What joy!

So this is my hypothesis of why guys decide to pick up a guitar and start singing. When an artist performs, people don’t interrupt him. Sure, they talk among themselves at the bar or in a booth, but they never come up to him and snatch that microphone away. And even if he only serves as background music for most, someone out there is hearing him. It’s the nature of our society.

Not every conversation is balanced, and sometimes there’s an extra person. We’ve all been there. You run into someone at a show, and your date hasn’t seen him since the 20th century, and so they are catching up on old times, and you’re just sitting there. You’ve heard all of your date’s stories, so that’s boring. And this other guy leads an extremely uninteresting life as far as you’re concerned.

So now the mook with the guitar is your best friend. He’s many people’s best friend right now. Let’s face it. It’s pretty rare that everybody in a room is paired evenly, and then it is a step further to assume that each of those conversations is having a fair and balanced exchange of ideas. Even some one-on-one conversations are so one-sided that the listener will stop performing her role. She’ll wander off mentally, like Homer Simpson at the softball game, when third base coach Mr. Burns is giving him all the signs before he steps to the plate. Why won’t he just let me bat indeed.

So the next time you are at a show, and the guy with his guitar is so bad that all the gin behind the bar won’t make it better, realize his plight. As a child, he was one of those that nobody paid attention to, and now he is doing the only thing left that will force people to listen to him. And when you think of how insecure artists are, doesn’t it make perfect sense? Well-adjusted people don’t need to go on stage, after all. People already listen to them because they’re well-adjusted.

I don’t know what that says about people who like to write columns on the Internet though. I think those people are just egotistical pricks that like to go on and on. After all, a screen is limitless. The more words there are, the more times you can hit Page Down. Kristin Hersh says that everybody’s got something to hide except for her and her monkey. I say there’s no reason to hide anything because there’s always some idiot that will hear it. Thanks for hearing me, idiots.

In June 2001 a friend from college sent me an IM and asked if I wanted to copy edit some music reviews for his fledgling site. I said sure, but don’t expect me to write any.

Over time that became more and more of a ridiculous statement, and eventually I was writing most of the reviews on the site. After the May 2006 issue was posted, monthly meetings mysteriously stopped, as did site updates, and my pizza intake was cut more than 90%.

The site as I knew it stayed up for about another year, as did the e-mail from it (jughead@agouti.com). But all good things apparently must come to an end, and so did this. I was kind of taken aback by the sudden termination of what otherwise appeared to be a wildly successful site, but it’s amazing what getting married and having kids can do to a site’s founders. And I never really did anything about it, so it’s not as if I can really say anything now.

So take a ride in the wayback machine, as they say, and read about bands you’ve never heard of. First I will post the features I wrote, and then I will start posting the reviews alphabetically. The more meetings I have, the sooner this will get done. It could take a while.

Hi kids. So I have reviewed a few hundred albums over the years, and thanks to the magic of archive.org, I have been able to track a lot of them down. Because nothing on the Internet lasts forever (been looking for the mid-’90s-era ravers dictionary that had the definition of “September child” for nearly 10 years), I am going to post my old reviews here so they can at least be found by searchers.

I’ll start with the ones at agouti.com and move on to West Coast Performer if I have time. I didn’t review as many there, and those reviews sort of suck anyway, so I am not as motivated to post those anyway.

Finally, I hope that the hits that these reprinted reviews generate will get enough attention that other artists will be interested in having me review their albums now. Those interested in having their music reviewed can e-mail me at joel@joelshitshow.com, and we can take it from there.